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Walnut Hills has been home to a significant middle- and working-class Black community since the 1850s. In 1931, African American entrepreneur Horace Sudduth bought 1004 Chapel Street and then the row of buildings across Monfort, naming them the Manse Hotel and Annex. Throughout the 1940s, hotel dinner parties could move to the Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs house next door for dancing. A large addition to the Manse in 1950 created its own ballroom, 24-hour coffee shop, upgraded Sweetbriar Restaurant, and more guest rooms. It appeared in the Negro Motorist’s Green Book between 1940-1963, providing local, transient, and residential guests both catered meetings and top entertainment during the last decades of segregation. It closed in the late 1960s when the economic need for a first-class segregated hotel disappeared in the age of Black Power.
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Its location and the tides of war established Gallipolis, then a town of some 3,000, as a point of strategic military importance to the Union upon the outbreak of the conflict in 1861. It was destined during the next four years to play a role without counterpart in Ohio. Here through this troop concentration area passed thousands of soldiers to the great campaigns. Here the traditional peacetime activity of the town, long a depot of supplies for the Kanawha Valley, was turned to military purposes for maintaining armies in the field. Here riverside warehouses held vast military stores to be transported by steamboat. Here newly-mustered troops set up Camp Carrington in a wheat field on the upper side of town. Here the women of Gallipolis helped minister to thousands of wounded and sick in an army hospital
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The construction of Putnam County’s first public swimming pool helped Columbus Grove weather the Great Depression of the 1930s. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Village of Columbus Grove planned the pool to provide much-needed jobs and recreational facilities for the residents of Putnam County. Between the fall of 1935 and 1936, local men (and two women) built the pool and shelter house by hand from rock quarried on site. The workers were not trained stone masons or cutters. Befitting their limited skills, the pool was built in a simplified Norman Revival/Rustic architectural style. Wages ranged from $.33 to $.55 per hour. The pool’s grand opening was July 1, 1937. That first year, adults paid $.25 to swim, and children were charged $.10. The Columbus Grove Municipal Pool was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.
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One of America’s best-known sport shooters and entertainers of the late 1800s, Annie Oakley was born Phoebe Ann Mosey (or Mozee) north of Versailles in Darke County in 1860. She achieved local fame for her shooting ability as a hunter while still in her teens. By 1885 Oakley was a star performer in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. With husband and manager Frank Butler, she refined a shooting act and image that appealed to late 19th century notions of a romanticized but vanishing West. Throughout her 30-year performing career, Oakley provided honest entertainment in a deception-prone industry while demonstrating widening opportunities for women. She retained her Ohio ties throughout her life and is interred at Brock Cemetery, eleven miles north of Greenville.
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In September 1786, Captain Benjamin Logan of Kentucky captured a young Indian boy during a raid across the Ohio River on the Machachac tribe towns of the Shawnee nation. Upon returning to Kentucky, Captain Logan made the 14 year old boy part of his family until he was forced by treaty to return him to his native people. From the period of residence in Kentucky to the time of his death, Johnny Logan, as he was named, was a friend of the United States. Following the declaration of war against England in 1812, he joined the American service. He was employed by the Indian Agent John Johnston at Piqua to help evacuate Ohio women and children living near Fort Wayne. The siege of that fort was later lifted by the combined force of Kentucky and Ohio troops under the command of General William Henry Harrison. [continued on other side]
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One of Ohio’s most influential politicians in the early 20th century, Washington Court House native Harry Daugherty (1860-1941) was widely known as a “President-maker” and served instrumental roles in President Warren G. Harding’s administration, culminating a long career in state and national politics. As Attorney General from 1921 to 1924, Daugherty established the first federal women’s penitentiary, recommended former president William Howard Taft to the Supreme Court, and ended a controversial 1922 railroad strike. Implicated in scandals complicated by the suicide of his assistant and fellow Fayette County native Jess Smith, Daugherty was eventually cleared in congressional investigations and two bribery trials, and subsequently published an insider’s account of the Harding Administration. Both Daugherty and Smith are buried in Washington Cemetery.
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Union Village, the first and largest Shaker (United Society of Believers) community west of the Allegheny Mountains, was established in 1805. Nearly 4,000 Shakers lived in Union Village, the last living here until 1920. They owned 4,500 acres of land with more than 100 buildings. Union Village was parent to other communities in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Georgia. Shakers were among the most successful religious communal societies in the United States. Believe in equality of men and women, separation of sexes, confession, communal ownership of property, and celibacy helped define their society. The name “Shaker” was derived from the shaking and dancing that were part of their worship. Union Village Shakers were successful entrepreneurs selling herbal medicines, garden seeds, and brooms. They also raised and bred Poland China hogs, Durham cattle, and Merino sheep.
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Daniel E. Weltzien, pilot and hometown son, dreamed of a flying community – one where every family would have a plane in their garage for work or play. In June 1965, the Williams Farm on Acme Hill became a runway with taxiways to every home. Young men and women came for flying lessons, and now traverse the world in space, the military, and commercially. Surviving fire, tornadoes, an earthquake, Ohio winters, and severe crosswinds, students still come here to take their first flight and become pilots. In Ohio, birthplace of aviation pioneers, this is “SKYPARK” THE FLYING COMMUNITY, a first in Ohio because a man dared to dream.
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